The accused murderer’s life wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.

He had everything most people want — money, opportunity, education, a respected family name. He claimed his IQ fell in the genius range.

But Joshua Komisarjevsky also had something sinister inside him. He called it “a terrible feeling.” Whatever it was exactly, an innocent family would suffer unspeakably for it. A husband, a wife and their daughters, 17 and 11. The Petits of Connecticut — that family.

Though their names might not be well known, after months of media coverage, their nightmare is. On July 23, 2007, men wearing ski masks attacked the family as they slept in their suburban Cheshire home. The father, a physician, was beaten with a bat and tied to a pole in his basement. His wife was raped and strangled. The girls were tortured for nearly seven hours, one sexually assaulted, then killed when the attackers set the house on fire.

The doctor survived and later mustered the strength and courage to testify against one of the attackers in court.

The horror that happened at 300 Sorghum Mill Drive was so savage, jurors wept repeatedly during the September trial of Steven Hayes. They later said the experience changed their lives. Hayes, a 47-year-old career criminal, who one juror described as an “empty shell,” was convicted of murder, rape and kidnapping.

Last week, he was sentenced to die.

During the trial, Hayes’ lawyers tried to shift attention to his accused accomplice, Komisarjevsky, who is expected to be tried on similar charges, including arson, in January.

Hayes was a follower, they insisted. Komisarjevsky was the smarter guy, the manipulator, the orchestrator of a home invasion so brutal that it reinvigorated the death penalty in one of only two New England states that still have it. New Hampshire is the other.

Komisarjevsky’s journals and letters show a man of keen intelligence who “takes responsibility for masterminding [the Petit attack],” said Brian McDonald, an author who Komisarjevsky wrote to frequently from jail. “He takes credit for orchestrating what went on in that house.”

Much of the writing, however, is rambling self-analysis about how the accused killer’s own alleged childhood rape stoked his “menacing mind.”

Komisarjevsky has pleaded not guilty. There is a gag order issued in the case. No one, including lawyers, is allowed to comment.

Jailers have confiscated some of Komisarjevsky’s writings, said Beth Karas, a former prosecutor who covered the Petit case for “In Session” on TruTV. It’s possible they could be presented as evidence in his trial. Beyond the heinous details of the crime, the writings provoke more questions, more reason to ask: What evil are people capable of?

“In my 24 years in the criminal justice system, this is one of the few cases that gave me a nightmare,” Karas said.